


Playground Politics

by deskclutter



Category: The Sandman
Genre: Gen, Siblings, surprise Discworld, tortured metaphors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-22
Updated: 2010-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-10 05:43:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 419
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Death is the best big sister.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playground Politics

  
Asphalt is underfoot. She's on the job; she always is. She passes buildings, cars, a playground, but she's not needed there.

Bullies on the playground. In her own way she's as attached to her function as Dream is. She's just more flexible about its confines. but she has to admit: she hates watching them, on a personal level.

Right and wrong are human concepts. But she's part human too, she's lived under their skins too long for her not to change into something a little bit like them. Change, that's the crux of humanity.

Something about playground bullies irks her.

  
She's not the only Death in the multiverse. There are a dozen odd handfuls of Deaths who carry scythes, look like ads for Atkins gone bad.

She's different, true.

But then everybody's different and with that come differences in opinion.

She can't really say she likes all the other facets of herself. But there are a few she does.

(There is, for instance, a really keen little rat skeleton who only collects rodents in a cowl, with a scythe. She's very fond of it.)

  
This world is her world, in all its human glory.

There are very important beings in this world, who're different from the important beings.

In another world, Death is an adopted father and a grandfather. He has a manservant called Albert, his pale horse is called Binky.

In her world, she is an aunt, a great-aunt, an elder sister. That's different from a father with a cheery, but skeletal perpetual grin.

Bone white, she thinks, amused. No snowflakes here.

  
White things are pretty and so are black things and red things and telephone ice cream things.

(She really likes the stuff her siblings come up with sometimes. Even the Corinthian.)

But white's the colour of lots of things: snow, bone, paper, pearl. White's a pretty absence of colour.

  
An oyster? Not really. This world holds snowflakes, not pearls.

The Endless have never had childhoods. They sprang into the world adult shaped. They've never had time to grow up.

The world is their playground. That's how Desire thinks.

Playgrounds come with bullies, and Death has a lot of younger siblings.

Family is forever, it's said.

  
If the world's their playground, it's one where the rules change frequently.

But Death will always be an older sister and the bullies in the playground do not play nice.

Bullies irk her.

Because she's the older sister to five siblings, she'll stand up for them.

That's what older sisters do.

**Author's Note:**

> The original contained a phrase that was cis-centric in a way I am no longer comfortable with. It has now been removed.


End file.
